You should be running it yesterday or last month, honestly, but we’ll settle for now. Why? There are so many reasons we made a Top 10 list.

1. Build Your Newsletter Audience

As a percentage of your overall audience, email traffic might be quite small — but it may be your most valuable traffic source. That’s because your email list is the only relationship with your audience that you actually own. 

Your social traffic lives and dies with the platform you build it on. (How are your MySpace followers doing lately?) Even if the platform survives, algorithm changes wreak havoc.

Google Search traffic can tank with an update. Referral traffic can vanish without any warning or fault of your own. And few of us can rely on people typing our URL into their browsers.

The one constant since the 1970s? The Detroit Lions being bad at football. Email.

Grow is loaded with Subscribe features to help you expand exponentially in this arena. From Spotlight Subscribe, to pop-ups, Action Pack and Exclusive Content, Grow fuels newsletter growth — and builds relationships with your readers  — no matter what the future holds.

2. Make More Money Today!

We all love to talk about Chrome getting rid of third-party cookies (3PC) in 2024, but let’s not forget the trendsetters — Safari and Firefox put the kibosh on 3PC years ago.

When readers are logged into your site through Grow on these browsers, your earnings could increase*. Today. These readers currently can be valued at more than double the worth of non-Grow readers on average.

Better still, even with 3PC still around for the time being on Chrome, you could make more there as well. On average, authenticated traffic can be worth over 50 percent more than third-party data on Chrome because it’s so reliable. That’s right now, before cookies are gone, and that figure should only increase when we lose the ability to track non-Grow readers once 3PC are gone and the value of those readers decreases.

3. Grow Uses 3PC While We Still Have Them

We still have two weeks of 2023 with 3PC in effect, and the 2024 phase out is going to be a slow rollout (only 1 percent of cookies will be deprecated initially).

That means we still have some time left with cookies around, and you better believe Grow is taking advantage of that.

On Chrome, if a logged-in reader who created a Grow account comes to your site, when they show up, they’re already signed in. 

Publishers get all the advantages of logged in readers, like increased CPMs, and readers get personalized content they’ll love.

Simply turning on Grow could mean more money in your pocket* with no effort — and the sooner you turn it on, the more valuable it becomes in the long term.

4. When Third-Party Cookies Go Away, Your First-Party Data Endures

To be clear, when we talk about cookies going away, we mean browser-based third-party cookies. When a reader logs in to your site, that’s stored on site as a first-party cookie.

That means all those readers who come to your website, even through third-party cookies on Chrome, will remain logged in to your site once third-party cookies go away.

Think of these like a nice “cookie bridge” — and the sooner you run Grow, the sooner you can begin building up your reserves for a post-3PC world.

Convert third-party cookies into first-party data starting today, simply by enabling Grow.

5. Increase Traffic

If extra money and future-proofing your business with authenticated traffic aren’t enough to persuade you, how about increased web traffic?

Grow has features like Recommended Content, Search, Bookmarks and Automailer that are designed to increase the value of every visitor to your website by providing them opportunities for repeat engagements.

Getting that second pageview out of a visitor is huge — and we all know how challenging that can be, especially with traffic from social media platforms.

Through years of optimizations and built-in machine learning, Grow optimizes your readers’ experiences to make sure they stick around — and it works.

The average site running any of those features gets more pageviews. In November 2023, we saw nearly 13 million additional pageviews across sites running these features, which could mean more money in your pocket today.

6. Speed Up Your Site

Did we mention that you get all of the tools listed above without slowing down your site?

Across the internet, related content, subscribe forms and search plugins are often some of the most taxing on your site. Not with Grow.

Grow provides you all of those features with built-in lazy loading and optimizations to help ensure that neither your server nor your site’s Core Web Vitals are adversely affected.

So turn off those taxing plugins and other third-party JavaScript and help speed up your website with a single Grow script (or with our Grow WordPress plugin). A faster site can mean more ad revenue.

7. Save Money

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing ways in which you can earn more money with Grow. But would you believe you can also save at the same time?

That’s because Grow is free. Better than free, actually, because it may help you earn revenue*!

Removing many of the plugins we just mentioned means eliminating paid, recurring expenses from your budget. Not only can you save money by removing those and going with Grow instead, but our Automailer feature allows you to send emails for free. 

Paying for an Email Sending Provider (ESP) is one of the most costly expenses for many publishers. In many cases, Automailer is an effective, free replacement.

NOTE: If your email solution is optimized, and you’re happy with it, we definitely recommend sticking to your ESP. But if you’re like many of us and never optimized an ESP? Automailer is for you.

A lot of us set up RSS-to-email feeds and then moved on. In those situations, you could ditch that setup for Automailer — a system that automatically sends your latest and top performing posts to your readers based on their individual recommended content. That means tailored emails to each subscriber. 

(For free, in case we didn’t mention that three times already.)

8. Build Your Reader Base

We all love any traffic we can get, but not all traffic is created equal. A reader that consumes one pageview after coming from Pinterest will never be worth the same as a loyal reader who returns week in and week out after opening your newsletter.

Why? That’s a subject for an entire blog post — but long story short, readers who are more engaged with your content are also more likely to see relevant ads, which improves their user experience. 

Plus, thanks to Grow, all of these logged-in readers will fall into the category of authenticated traffic, which again, on average, can be worth more than double the value of unauthenticated traffic on browsers like Safari and Firefox. 

You might not think of your readers as “super fans” along the lines of Taylor Swift’s legions of devotees, but this is the publishing equivalent — they will follow you no matter where the web goes. They belong with you, if you will.

Bad jokes aside, we can’t predict every aspect of what the web will look like in a few years, but we can promise you it’s changing fast and won’t be like it is today.

Loyal readers will stick with you, though. Grow is the engagement framework built for you to attract and keep super fans, and Grow readers are that fan base.

Mediavine is constantly working on even more ways to make sure they keep coming back. Features like Subscribe, Automailer and Bookmarks are just the beginning.

9. Help Us Grow Together

Individually, no single publisher can generate the volume of authenticated traffic and the scale of first-party data that advertisers need to replace third-party cookies.

We’re talking about tens of millions of registered readers. Not even the top sites on the internet with the biggest subscriber bases have that.

But combined? Mediavine publishers are bigger than the top sites on the internet. 

Trying to grow your newsletter on your own is fine, but even a successful website is probably sending out emails to tens of thousands of subscribers. We need tens of millions.

Tens of millions means at least 5-10% of traffic from Mediavine sites logging in. Grow readers are shared between our sites, and we need to bring in a lot more of them — together.

It takes all of us, and the sooner we start this collective mission, the closer we’ll be to the goal when third-party cookies are officially a thing of the past.

10. Help Shape the Future of Grow

We purposely launched Grow in what we call the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage when we released it three years ago, and we did this for a reason. 

Grow has always been about providing value to readers. Since every site is different and you know your readers better than anyone, it’s you — our publishers — who have been driving the roadmap of Grow from the onset.

You can’t be providing that feedback, and driving the future of this platform and the web, unless you’re running Grow — and thousands of our publishers are not. 

Are there features missing from Grow that are preventing you from running it? Or things you think could be done better or differently in an ideal world?

Run Grow now. Then share that feedback.

Grow has evolved like crazy in the past three years and will only continue to do so in 2024 and beyond, but we need you to be part of the solution. 

The future of the web is in our hands. Let’s Grow together.

Please note: Grow users must be utilizing Mediavine’s ad services to potentially increase revenue with Grow. Mediavine does not guarantee any revenue increase as a result of using Grow.

The post 10 Reasons to Run Grow Now appeared first on Mediavine.

We have officially reached the maximum threshold of things we can call Grow so we have made the decision to sell Grow Social to our friends at NerdPress, solidifying our long-standing collaboration and giving Grow Social the opportunity to, well, grow, while our team at Mediavine focus on our initiatives laid out in our 2024 Product Roadmap. 

To be clear, we know this has been confusing. Two products with the same name? What were we thinking? (That’s an explanation for another blog post.)

Grow is our first-party data solution designed to help publishers thrive once third-party cookies are gone.

Grow Social and Grow Social Pro were our social-sharing plugins that helped your readers easily share your content to their social media pages. And now it has a new name.

Creating a Hubbub About Social Sharing

As we usher in yet another new era of the internet, publishers are in search of reliable ways to share their content and engage their audiences — maybe even create some hubbub about their sites and expand their audiences. 

Hence the new name: Hubbub.

The fun and playful name brings about an end to the long-standing confusion between Grow and Grow Social — finally.

With 60% of NerdPress’s clients already using the plugin, adding it to their offerings — while we focus on first-party data with Grow — felt like the perfect solution for both companies. 

Currently, Hubbub is a plugin that provides social sharing buttons for bloggers using the WordPress platform. It can be installed on your website by visiting the WordPress plugin repository and adding the plugin to your WordPress admin.

Hubbub is Important for the Future of Publishing

Now more than ever, with changes in search traffic patterns and new search engines popping up daily (hello, TikTok as a search engine?), Hubbub’s social sharing capabilities are tools that savvy publishers will want to leverage.

According to Andrew Wilder, NerdPress’ founder and CEO, despite social sharing tools not being talked about very often, they are a very real way to add additional, unbiased validation to your site. 

During one of our calls to plan this transition, Wilder shared that “One of the things Google has been pushing for is EEAT (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust) and there are many ways to indicate that on a website. But one of them is social sharing accounts.”

Social share tools, like Hubbub, allow a publisher’s audience to share content they find helpful and which should be ranked higher. 

NerdPress and Mediavine, A Long-Standing Partnership

Andrew Wilder is not only the NerdPress founder and CEO, but he is also a Mediavine publisher with his site Eating Rules, making this recent collaboration even more special. “Mediavine and NerdPress have always enjoyed working together and collaborating, I feel like we are a part of the Mediavine family,” Andrew told us during our recent sit down with him to discuss the big sale, “I love working with Mediavine and what you stand for, your mission to support publishers even as things evolve,” in the tech industry.

The sale of the social sharing plugin to NerdPress only serves to strengthen the already existing relationship between them and Mediavine. We have a long history of collaborating with NerdPress, Andrew has been a guest on both our Podcast and Teal Talks, and many of our publishers are happy NerdPress customers and expressed their excitement at the sale. The sale also means Mediavine has more time to dedicate to our current products, especially Grow and the all-new Trellis. 

The Future of Hubbub

NerdPress is excited to dedicate time and resources to improving the plugin so it has the support it needs to continue to be beneficial for publishers. They are dedicating a team to ensure that the plug-in is kept current as technology evolves and the social media landscape changes, something we know happens far too quickly.

We are excited to see what the future of Hubbub holds under the care of NerdPress. Publishers can find more information and updates about Hubbub at morehubbub.com.

The post NerdPress Acquires Grow Social Pro appeared first on Mediavine.

After nearly four years of delays, the end of third-party cookies is nigh. Deprecation will begin in early 2024 and cookies will be fully phased out by the end of the year, according to Google.

The end of third-party cookies will forever change the ad landscape — but will it mean the end of content creators?

Not if you’re a Mediavine publisher.

Because Mediavine built the only first-party data solution for publishers and advertisers alike, we predict these changes will mean only good things for those who join us on this journey.

What is that solution? And what exactly is the problem that it’s solving for? 

Grab your coffee and take a seat while we break down the end of cookies, the coming shift in the ecosystem and Mediavine’s multifaceted plan for the future.

What is Going Away When Cookies Go Away?

We’ve gone over this in detail and recommend checking out some of our previous blog posts for more information. But the long and short of it is that the end of cookies means the end of advertisers’ ability to serve ads relevant to readers — and measure how well those ads worked.

Example: If you’re selling diapers, you’ll no longer be able to target parents of newborns, nor find out from local stores if you sold more diapers to readers that saw your campaigns.

Browser-based (third-party) cookies made this user data, and performance tracking of ads targeted toward those readers, readily available. Come 2024, this fundamental tool of the advertising industry will be fully deprecated. Then what?

Without an alternative to this system, expect advertisers to be willing to pay less per ad unit since they’re not able to hyper-target audiences or accurately measure investment. 

Put another way, brands will still want to reach the same people, but without cookies, they’ll have to buy more inventory across the whole internet in order to achieve the same results, meaning the amount you’ll see from the units on any individual site will decline sharply.

How much less are we talking about? Google estimates up to a 60% decline in ad performance.

Deep breaths. That figure implies that there are no solutions or alternatives to third-party cookies. But as a Mediavine publisher, you’ve got plenty. 

Mediavine’s Multifaceted Approach

We need to recognize that cookies are going away for a reason — the widespread shift in reader expectations toward greater privacy regulation is no accident.

Things are changing and we can’t simply replicate what we had in the past. Not every reader is willing to be served fully personalized ads.

This is why we’re being realistic and going with what we think of as a Good, Better, Best methodology for addressing the variety of readers on your website. 

Think of a pyramid with Good at the bottom, making up the bulk of web traffic. It’s essential, but you really want the Better and Best sections at the top of the pyramid.

In summary, here are the three levels of the pyramid:

1. Good. Many readers will accept no personalization at all. For these readers, we’ll rely on direct-sold contextual ads on Safari and on Chrome, as well as Google’s Privacy Sandbox. (More on these shortly.)
2. Better. These readers won’t go so far as to log into your website but will still consent to personalized ads. With these readers, we’ll be able to replicate a lot of the signals (and performance) cookies have given us. (More on this shortly also.)
3. Best. Authenticated Traffic. The pinnacle of the pyramid for a reason. The best readers are those willing to log into your site and, in doing so, allow us to serve personalized ads and even partner with companies to provide measurement to brands. At this point, we’re not just equalling the performance of a website using cookies but performing even better than ever.

Mediavine will be able to serve high-paying ads to all three categories of readers with the goal of maximizing the Better and Best categories to net you even more revenue on balance. 

Let’s break down the three groups in more detail to get a better understanding of how they will formulate our comprehensive strategy to surpass the third-party cookie era.

Good: The Anonymous User

Performance: Not Third-Party Cookies But Alright & Getting Better

A majority of your traffic isn’t going to consent to personalized ads nor log in. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is, and a majority of anything is impossible to ignore.

So what will we do to help publishers monetize the majority of your readers once the world can no longer rely on third-party cookies?

First, it will depend on the browser. If they’re running Chrome, we’re going to take advantage of the Privacy Sandbox.

As one of only six GCPP Premier partners, we’ve been in regular contact with both the Google Chrome and Ad Manager teams responsible for the Privacy Sandbox.

We’ve been early testers of its features over the years, including the Protected Audience API and Topics API — the two features that look like third-party cookie replacements for personalized ads.

Between these two APIs and the rest of the Privacy Sandbox, we hope to recover a lot of the lost revenue for these (many) good readers.

But that still leaves Safari, Firefox and other browsers without third-party cookies — as well as Chrome users that have opted out of Privacy Sandbox features.

In those cases, we still have a variety of ways to help you monetize those readers through our incredible partnerships and sales efforts. 

We’ll be using more old school ad targeting methods like contextual, where ads are about the content or site you’re reading rather than the reader. This style of ad targeting won’t earn publishers as much as cookie-based ads do today, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing, especially as this technology improves.

Speaking of better …

Better: First-Party Data

Performance: On Par With Third-Party Cookies or Darn Close

Every time Google or anyone else talks about the end of third-party cookies, they talk about first-party data as the solution — and for good reason. 

Mediavine is perfectly positioned to assist publishers in harnessing the power of first-party data. In fact, our expertise in this area was recently acknowledged at Google’s Publisher Data Summit, where we were honored with the First-Party Data Activation award for our innovative first-party data solutions.

But, without third-party cookies, there’s no third-party data.

Ultimately there’s only one person that can replace the data, and that’s the person who runs the website. The publisher. You.

That’s why Mediavine built Grow, a tool to allow all publishers to band together and generate enough volume of first-party data to have an impact on advertiser spend.

Individually, none of us has the scale to offer what advertisers need, but combined across our 10,000+ publisher sites, we sure do.

That’s where Grow comes in. If a reader consents to personalized ads, even if they don’t log in, we’re able to start learning about the reader as they browse sites running Grow.

For example, if the reader browses a Grow site about cars, we may learn that they are looking to purchase a car. Then, when they browse your food blog, which is also running Grow, we can serve a car ad to that reader even when they’re browsing a food blog. 

You can start to see where the scale of Grow is vital to its success and why we want as many websites running this as we possibly can.

These ads — not the Best (still to come) but Better than anonymous because they’ve given us some degree of consent — provide advertisers many of the targeting capabilities they need and should be nearly as strong performance-wise as what third-party cookies/data provide.

Now we’re getting somewhere, but we’re not done yet. The ultimate goal is not just replacing third-party data, but improving on it with authenticated traffic — the Best solution of all.

Best: Authenticated Traffic

Performance: Better Than Any Third-Party Cookies You Ever Had, By a Wide Margin

This isn’t just where Grow shines; it’s where Mediavine publishers can dominate. No one else is offering a solution like this at this scale.

Authenticated traffic is when a reader logs in to your site and consents to personalized ads.

Grow is able to do this through a single sign-on account in which readers agree to plain English terms of service that let them know how we plan to use their data.

Then, all you need to do as a publisher is have the reader log in.

You don’t need to worry about account creation, and more importantly, the data and consent side of the equation. It becomes one simple click.

Already, we have millions of combined users and Grow provides a whole host of features that make logging in as easy as that one click.

What do advertisers get out of this?

A lot. With first-party data in play, we can use identifiers such as Unified ID 2.0 and LiveRamp ATS to give them even more than they got with third-party cookies.

This allows advertisers to bring their own data to the equation, and in a privacy-safe manner. It’s better data for them and better for the reader.

And the best part of all? It’s also better for you. Way better. 

Even while third-party cookies are still around, we can see that this authenticated traffic already earns publishers nearly 115% MORE on Safari.

We expect that figure to increase as well. Remember, this is still new and many advertisers have yet to invest serious resources into these kinds of campaigns. 

We believe this is the future of digital advertising and that Mediavine publishers are poised to remain the top earning publishers on the internet because of it.

So, What’s Going to Happen to My Revenue?

A lot depends on the type of site you run as well as the decisions you make as a publisher. Do you plan to run Grow and optimize for those Better and Best ads? If so, we believe you’ll find yourself walking away with a nice increase in revenue.

Is Grow Required to Stay at Mediavine?

While not technically required, unless you already have 5-10% of your traffic logged in and properly consenting, then you’re certainly going to want Grow.

If you’re thinking your 20,000 email subscribers have you covered, let’s chat.

Part of what makes Grow work so well is the collective power it brings to publishers. Your 20,000 subscribers may seem relatively modest, but through Grow, they are combined with the subscribers of potentially thousands of other websites to create a massive pool of authenticated users that rivals any publisher online and draws the attention of premium advertisements.

In short, this isn’t something that can be done easily on your own. Even some of the largest publications on the internet have trouble doing this alone, and most independent publishers don’t have anywhere near the scale.

If you want to continue to work with Mediavine and completely ignore the other ad types, you certainly can. You will take advantage of our Privacy Sandbox integrations, contextual advertising and partnerships, and you certainly will still make money.

But you’ll likely be leaving some money on the table compared to the third-party cookie world of today — and certainly more than if you run and optimize for Grow immediately.

How do you optimize for Grow? 1,970 words is enough for one article. I’m tired. But stay tuned because that post is coming soon!

The post How Publishers Can Profit in a Cookie-less World: Mediavine’s Comprehensive First-Party Data Solution appeared first on Mediavine.

How can you protect your content from unwanted scraping and data collection in a world with generative AI?

At Mediavine, we believe that generative AI does have value for publishers, especially around speeding up workflows and potentially reducing costs. But there are definitely drawbacks and concerns, such as copyright infringement, that need to be taken seriously.

Google agrees, which is why it’s releasing Google-Extended, a solution to allow more control for publishers to protect their content.

Publishers want greater choice and control over how their content is used for emerging generative AI use cases—if it’s used at all. Google-Extended is Google’s solution to that concern. Google seeks to develop AI tools guided by AI principles that respect consumer privacy.

What’s Google-Extended?

Before we go any further, it’s important to state that this is not an official Mediavine recommendation but an available option that we’re presenting to you as your business partner.

Even though you have the option to use Google-Extended, it might impact your site’s search performance. It’s important to remember that every website is unique, so whether your traffic goes up or down will really depend on your specific site.

That said, Google-Extended allows publishers to control access to the content on their sites; website administrators can choose whether to help Google’s AI models or not.

Google-Extended is one of the ways Google is testing simple, scalable controls to provide transparency. The idea behind it is fairly straight-forward: as AI keeps on growing and is rolled out in more and more ways, the ad tech industry — like most industries — is only going to become more complex.

Google-Extended allows publishers to manage whether their sites will work with Google’s AI solutions, such as Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs (application programming interfaces), to improve them for accuracy and capability over time. Google-Extended also includes future generations of models that power those products.

How Can Publishers Use Google-Extended?

Now, for the technical stuff.

Google-Extended is a standalone product token that publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs. It’s also what Google considers to be a “common crawler,” which is sometimes referred to as a “robot” or “spider.”

A crawler is a generic term for any program that’s used to automatically discover and scan websites by following links from one web page to another.

Google uses crawlers to perform actions for its products, either automatically or when triggered by a user request. They help Google build and improve search indices, perform product-specific crawls and they’re useful for analysis.

They always obey robots.txt rules and generally crawl from the IP ranges published in the googlebot.json object.

So, how can Google-Extended be implemented on your site?

It’s time for that caveat again: this is not an official Mediavine recommendation, but an available option that we’re presenting to you as your business partner.

Visit Google’s Overview of Google crawlers and fetchers (user agents) to learn how to implement Google-Extended.

Conclusion

Google has introduced Google-Extended as one solution to empower publishers with greater choice and control over their content in the era of generative AI.

Implementing Google-Extended is an option for publishers, but individual outcomes may vary depending on the unique characteristics of your website.

We encourage publishers to explore Google-Extended and its potential benefits, keeping in mind that the choice to engage with AI technologies should align with your specific goals and objectives. Mediavine’s Support team isn’t equipped to assist our publishers with technical support for Google-Extended implementation, so for that, we recommend contacting your web developer. 

As your business partner, we’re dedicated to offering you valuable tools to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape. Google-Extended is one of those tools.

The post Manage AI Access to Your Content with Google-Extended appeared first on Mediavine.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the internet: Google’s September Helpful Content Update.

We turned to the data available to us across more than 10,000 sites to try to determine the volume of impact and potential causes for why some sites were hit by this update.

It’s important to note that we’re bringing you this data now — as opposed to two weeks ago — because we needed to allow some of the dust to settle. Running these numbers while the update was ongoing would have given us incomplete results and it takes time to analyze the data and pull it into something shareable. 

Let’s get to it, shall we? Warning: Numbers ahead.

How Many Sites Were Affected by the HCU?

Of the 10,302 sites represented by Mediavine ad management — as of the writing of this article — 607 were identified as having been negatively impacted by Google’s Helpful Content Update.

That’s 5.8% of sites. 

We also discovered 1,170 sites which saw positive increases to their Google referral traffic coming out of the HCU.

We know being part of that 5% feels huge to those whose sites were significantly impacted. But knowing whether or not your traffic decline is due to the HCU or is an organic decline over time helps us — and you — plan the next steps.

So, how are we defining “significantly impacted”? Glad you asked.

Our HCU Methodology

We started by looking at traffic across Mediavine publisher sites from the start of Q3 (so, July 1). Once we had start and end dates for the Helpful Content Update, we excluded those dates from the report. This was important to get clean data since the rollout was progressive across sites.

We also looked at other sources of referral traffic and identified sites whose overall traffic from all sources had been on a steady decline since before the start of the HCU. The indication in those cases is that, while Google referral traffic may have gone down, the update wasn’t the primary cause. 

Then we looked at the percentages of traffic increases and declines and grouped them like this:

• No Change
• Increase (greater than 5%)
• Decline between -5% and -20%
• Decline between -21% and -50%
• Decline less than -50%

In this case, “less” means more decline since we’re moving to the left on the number line.

(Confusing, yes, but our data analysts assured me this is accurate. And trust me, I asked if they were sure.)

From there, we filtered out sites making under $100 per week in gross revenue, not because these sites aren’t important, but because comparing a 50% decrease in revenue on a site making $100 is vastly different from a 50% decrease on a site making $10,000.

Both are 50%, and yes, both publisher groups matter tremendously. But the data sets can’t be compared fairly.

Now let’s talk about revenue, because a drop in traffic should equal a drop in revenue, too, right?

How Has the HCU Affected Revenue?

Across our publisher sites, we’ve seen around an 11% decline in referral traffic from Google, but we have not seen a corresponding decrease in revenue. Revenue remains at a net 0% change, most likely due to the HCU timing.

Since it coincided with the end of Q3 and the beginning of Q4, advertisers were already primed to increase their spend, and what the data shows is that many sites which lost Google referral traffic gained traffic from other sources, like Pinterest or Facebook, or even from other websites.

In fact, 40 of the 607 sites mentioned above experienced a positive gross revenue change despite a decline in traffic coming from Google.

Which Niches Were Affected by the HCU?

One of the questions we’re asked most often whenever we’re asked about data is “which niches are ____.” Insert anything from “most profitable” to “impacted” in that blank.

It may look as if lifestyle niches were most impacted, but that’s because lifestyle categories dominate Mediavine’s inventory. These are the results we expect to see here.

With that said, the breakdowns for the top 10 niches affected — positively and negatively — are as follows:

There are times when we can say, definitively, that some niches are hit harder than others.

Travel sites following a pandemic, for instance.

This is not one of those times. 

The top three niches across both positive and negative impact groups were the same and represent three of the four most high traffic niches on the internet.

There’s not a lot of evidence to support a claim that sites in certain niches were impacted more heavily than others once we acknowledge that the most heavily impacted niches are also the most abundant.

Are Higher Ad Density Settings Related to the HCU?

Based on the data available to us across more than 10,000 sites, we do not have any reason to believe that sites running more Mediavine ads — or fewer — were more heavily impacted by the Helpful Content Update. 

The data about ad density and the HCU is pretty agnostic.

Sites running all configurations of ad density settings were impacted, and sites running recommended density settings were impacted at the same rate (12%) across both Desktop and Mobile settings — even while representing 54% and 93% of publishers respectively.

Let’s talk about ad density for a second. 

Ad density, according to the Coalition for Better Ads, is about density rather than quantity. This means that the number of ads served on your site should be relative to the length of your content.

If your content is short, you’ll serve fewer ads. If your content is longer, you’ll serve ads proportionate to the length of your content.

Our recommended ad density setting for Mobile is 28% (20% on Desktop). The CBA recommends a 70/30 split between content and ads, and our recommendation for Desktop in-content ads is actually lower than CBA suggestions because it provides a better user experience.

No matter which frequency you choose in your Mediavine Dashboard, we will never run more ads than your content can support, on Desktop or Mobile.

Your readers and your revenue are our top priorities.

So, What Do We Do Now?

In short, nothing drastic.

It’s Q4.

We’re still learning about the HCU and monitoring its impact, just like the rest of the industry. Plus, there are two additional updates running concurrently right now.

Now is not the time to adjust ad density settings because ad spend is ramping up. And when you change something like the number of ads you’re serving — especially if you’re lowering your density because someone without data claims too many ads are the cause of your troubles — you’re hurting your earning potential from all the other traffic sources out there.

Google’s blog on what constitutes helpful content and how to evaluate your site is a great reference, but it requires evaluating your content objectively. Sometimes, we’re just too close to our own content to be able to evaluate it effectively.

This is where content optimization tools or mastermind peer groups can come in handy. Letting a tool or another human you trust give you unbiased feedback can eliminate some of the difficulties we experience when editing and evaluating our own content.

When updates like this happen and your site is impacted, it’s natural to want to know why. No one wants to see their hard work vanish overnight. 

Unless Google itself says “we hit your site,” and provides a reason, a lot of the evidence being presented for why some sites were impacted is anecdotal, reminding me of an important phrase in statistics: correlation does not imply causation.

We have a dedicated team who will continue to monitor and diagnose the HCU and other updates, and we’re looking deep into our data to see if there are any definitive commonalities across sites.

Update:

Regarding the exclusion of sites making under $100/week in gross revenue before the HCU: That $100 gross revenue per week refers only to revenue coming from Google traffic. Some sites are absolutely killing it at Pinterest referral traffic with almost none coming from Google.

We initially reported this in a way that indicated we had excluded all low-revenue sites, which wasn’t the case, and we apologize for the error. 

In our analysis, we controlled for declines in Google referral traffic against referral traffic from other sources.

In trying to isolate whether Google’s HCU was the cause for a site’s traffic decline, we have to exclude sites whose traffic from other sources is either increasing/holding steady or declining slightly (up to -10%) during the same time frame. Otherwise, we’re just reporting on a site’s overall traffic decline and not the Helpful Content Update specifically.

In the spirit of being thorough, we ran the data again and adjusted for publishers whose referral traffic from other sources was declining but whose rate of HCU traffic decline was at least two times greater.

That brought us to 795 publishers with a negative traffic impact. We also examined the way that Google Discover traffic reports through GA4 and found another three publishers impacted, which brings us to a total of 798, or 7.7% of Mediavine publishers.

Next steps for us? Looking at commonalities to try and determine connecting factors, keeping in mind that correlation does not mean causation.

The post Google Helpful Content Update: What Our Data Shows appeared first on Mediavine.

If you’ve been scouring the internet trying to figure out what Uplift actually is, you’re not alone. And we’re here to help!

What Is Uplift?

Uplift is our commitment to being champions of change in places where equitable representations of marginalized communities are lacking. Through events, education and our programmatic marketplace, Mediavine’s goal is to put more dollars into the pockets of diverse creators to make the world a more equitable place.

Why Did We Create Uplift?

When the universe puts you in a place of privilege, the best use of that advantage is to lift others along with you, and that’s what Uplift is all about. Mediavine cares deeply about allyship, fighting racism and finding equity in every aspect of life, and we know that when we join forces with our publishers we’re in a place to advocate for that in the ad tech industry.

While we have already worked hard at promoting our values internally, we recently learned from an independent industry report that Mediavine represents 77% of the sites owned by diverse publishers vetted by the study.

Since 2020, we have been increasing our efforts to use our voice externally to ensure that the publishers mentioned in that study —  and all of our publishers — know exactly where we stand. With you. Side-by-side in an effort to make the ad industry more equitable and inclusive.

Why is Uplift so Important?

As a voice for independent content creators, we want to ensure our industry pays attention to and understands the importance of diversity in site owners and their curated, engaged audiences. It is crucial that we support independent content creators and preserve an internet that is filled with varying perspectives and life experiences. We know that we have a platform to create space for solution-based conversations that address inherent problems like biased algorithms and advertiser blocklists. 

Media buying can make it easy for people to become numbers, meaning diverse creators are often overlooked and underrepresented.  Here at Mediavine, we not only know that these creators exist, but above all, we’re working to ensure all publishers are given equitable opportunities to build sustainable businesses. 

How Can I Opt In to Uplift?

It is simple — if you previously self-identified through our Influencer Marketing section of the Dashboard, you are already opted in! Data previously shared with us will continue to be used to bring direct deals to self-identified publishers. 

To verify that you have opted in, or to opt out of Uplift, visit the Uplift section of the Dashboard.

If you opted in to our Influencer Marketing program, double-check that your selections are still correct as we’ve recently made some updates to the Dashboard. For instance, publishers who have previously identified as “multiple ethnicities” will need to update their identification to select one or more of the available options.

Why Should You Self-Identify? 

Self-identifying is important in order to make your site eligible for Uplift. As you read this, advertisers the world over are creating budgets aimed at providing equity in their ad spend, but they have to know who you are in order to dedicate any of that money to being spent on your site and reaching your audience.

We know some of this information can be sensitive and want to be clear, no Mediavine publisher is required to self-identify. If you choose to self-identify, the information will not be used for anything beyond bringing your site more ad-spend opportunities.

If you have any questions about Uplift or self-identifying in the Mediavine Dashboard, we’re here to help.

The post Celebrate Diverse Independent Publishers: Opt In To Uplift Today appeared first on Mediavine.

At Mediavine, we’re proud to offer industry-leading revenue shares to our publishers — beginning at 75% and reaching as high as 90%!

But between Premiere, Pro, loyalty bonus and impression goals, we understand that revenue shares can be confusing at best — and that’s before taking into account that they can vary, by the month or even by the day.

We also understand that as the pioneers of transparency in the ad management space, this runs counter to our goal. 

We want more clarity — not less.

After feedback received on a Town Hall with some of our Premiere publishers – and from your emails, comments and requests over the years – we’re excited to announce that a Gross Revenue Report is coming soon!

What is a Gross Revenue Report?

We are going to offer you the ability to download your advertising earnings, in gross, via the Mediavine Dashboard. The revenue report includes the amount of net revenue you’ve received above the base revenue share of 75% along with historic revenue values.

It will look similar in formatting to our other exportable reports, and will show your earnings in both gross and net. The revenue report includes the amount of net revenue you’ve received above the base revenue share of 75%

This will allow you to view Mediavine’s take rate as well as your revenue share. Currently, the dashboard has displayed only net (to the publisher).

When will I be able to see it?

The Gross Revenue Report development and testing is currently in progress, and we plan to release it next month.

Why are we announcing it now?

Again, transparency. Our Premiere publishers spoke and we listened.

You have our commitment and we wanted you to hear that as quickly as possible.

Is this it?

No, not at all. We respect that this is your livelihood and that you want more insight into what you are earning and what Mediavine is charging.

We don’t take it lightly that we are often the primary revenue source for your business, and want you to have full confidence and trust in our reporting.

We’re exploring ways to provide additional data points, and appreciate all the feedback the community continues to bring us.

It only makes us all better, so keep it coming.

The post Update: Gross Revenue Report is Live appeared first on Mediavine.

Many publishers are struggling to measure year-over-year performance, learning new definitions for common terms (looking at you, Sessions and Engaged Sessions), and trying to figure out how to update and reconnect tools.

The experts at Mediavine are working alongside you to navigate this bumpy change! In this post, I’m breaking down:

• More about your earnings
• RPM
• How all of it is — and isn’t — affected by Google Analytics 4

Will GA4 Affect RPM?

GA4 will certainly affect RPM, but not in the way you might think!

To understand how your RPM will be affected, let’s first revisit RPM.

We’ve written several articles on RPM over the years, but it’s been a while, and new analytics are always a great excuse to review. 

RPM (revenue per mille) is a unit of measurement. Revenue per 1000 is what we are measuring with RPM, but from there, we have to establish per 1000 of what exactly. 

• Mediavine’s Dashboard default view gives you Session RPM or revenue per 1000 Sessions. 
• You can toggle for Page RPM, which calculates revenue per 1000 Pageviews. 
• If you want to calculate RPM for Engaged Sessions (a new GA4 metric I mentioned in the update about our Application Process) or for Users, you can plug these metrics in as traffic in the equation below. 

At its core, RPM is just a basic math equation: 

Revenue / Traffic * 1000 = RPM

What Does RPM Mean for You?

Many of you already know these details, but some of the following questions are common, even with experienced publishers. Let’s break it down and connect more of the dots.

➡️ If RPM goes up, that does not necessarily mean you made more money. 

➡️ If RPM goes down, that does not mean you made less. 

➡️ If RPM is displaying as $0 or appears as a flat line on the graph, that does not have to mean your money has flatlined as well. 

We know this can be confusing. It seems like high RPM and/or higher traffic should equal more revenue, but that’s not always the case. We’ve got a handy help article about why RPM may drop during a traffic spike that dives into more detail. But the bottom line is this:

RPM is only a useful unit of measurement when the revenue and traffic parts of the equation are correct. 

In the context of GA4, Google is now calculating Sessions differently. Here’s how:

• GA4 Sessions: A session initiates when a user either opens your app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no session is currently active (e.g., their previous session has timed out). By default, a session ends (times out) after 30 minutes of user inactivity. 

• Universal Analytics Sessions: Each time a user comes to your site. An additional session is only created for a user if they visit another page after 30 minutes of inactivity or come back to visit from a different source or referrer.

Since the Traffic part of the RPM equation is slightly different in UA vs GA4, RPM will also be somewhat different.

For some publishers, sessions are tracking a bit lower in GA4. In that case, RPM will be higher because we are dividing revenue by fewer sessions.

If your sessions in GA4 are skewing higher than in Universal Analytics, RPM will be lower because you are dividing revenue by a higher number.

If RPM Goes Up, Why Don’t You Necessarily Make More Money?

Let me explain why you don’t always make more money if your RPM increases.

Example #1: If your developer accidentally deletes your analytics code halfway through the day, and it is only replaced halfway through the next day, you’ll have two days that only report half of your traffic. All that traffic still existed — readers were still visiting your site like normal from various sources — but Google Analytics wasn’t recording it.

In this example, you’d divide revenue from ALL the traffic by half of the traffic that was tracked. As a result, RPM will look artificially high for both of those days. However, the amount of revenue stays the same regardless of what Google Analytics is tracking, because your revenue isn’t determined by Google Analytics.

Example #2: The same logic applies if RPM drops after accidentally doubling a tracking script. You didn’t receive double the traffic by tracking it twice. In this scenario, you’d divide revenue by 2X the traffic that visited your site, so RPM will look artificially low.

But Wait. How Do Advertisers Know How To Spend If I’m Not Tracking My Traffic?!

The reason is simple: Advertisers aren’t connected to your Google Analytics. 

We connect your Mediavine Dashboard to analytics so we can combine your data with details about your ad revenue pulled from the ad server. The ad server is where all of the money details live.

If you never installed analytics, advertisers could still spend on your traffic. You just wouldn’t have a way to gain meaningful information about your revenue.

You can learn about S2S (Server-to-Server) and real-time bidding in detail here, but basically, a reader visits your site in their browser on a computer or mobile device, the browser talks to a server, then the server talks to the ad exchanges.

That browser action is why we care about cookies 🍪, the impending demise of those cookies, and why we built Grow.

Reminder: Use Grow now if you aren’t already! 2024 is just around the bend!

Establishing a New Normal

What will a new normal look like? This is where the real challenge lies. 

Traffic varies day to day, month to month and year over year, so it can be challenging to gauge if today was much higher than yesterday, especially when we’re tracking a slightly altered version of today compared to yesterday. 

If you started collecting GA4 data alongside Universal Analytics data prior to July 1, 2023, you can select a date range in GA4 and then select that same date range in UA. Compare the sessions reported and then calculate the percentage of difference. 

I sampled three months from my site and found that GA4 is reporting higher than UA by between 2.8 – 6.5%. If you recalculate RPM using the formula (Revenue / Traffic * 1000 = RPM), the percentage of change should match up with the difference you just tracked in traffic. 

Using your historical data will help you compare and find opportunities as you go forward. But don’t fret if you were a late adopter or waited until the July 1 deadline to make the switch. Just know where you made the switch and think of it as a reset. 

Make the most of the shift by setting a few new measurement goals, like increasing your engaged sessions and email subscribers.  

If you’re interested to see how 2023 revenue is tracking for publishers across Mediavine, check out our latest installment of Behind the Numbers With Brad: Planning for Q3 and Q4. 

As always, we’ll figure this out together.

The post How Will Google Analytics 4 Affect RPM? Here’s What Publishers Need To Know appeared first on Mediavine.

We’ve gone from four founders running a publishing company to 185 employees helping over 10,000 publishers monetize their websites. The Mediavine team has built unprecedented ad technology and brought it to independent publishers. 

We’ve become an organization that not only withstands turbulent economic conditions, a shifting privacy landscape, the rise of the robots and other factors, but also one that is a thought leader and change agent for an entire industry grappling with an uncertain future.

In many ways, it’s a different world than when we started. But what I’m most proud of are the things that have not changed after all that time.

We’re Still Mediavine.

At our core, we’re still run by the same founders. We’re still independent, have no outside investment and are not beholden to external shareholders.

We still answer to you, our publishers.

We believe this is what makes Mediavine truly unique. Our award-winning customer service and top-performing ad units may be what drove a lot of you to Mediavine, because our independence — and the culture that fosters it — drives the innovation behind everything we do.

We’re still Mediavine. Here are a few reasons why that’s important — and how our publishers reap the rewards, year after year.

Industry Leading Revenue Shares

The biggest reason why our publishers earn the most is a simple one: They get to keep the vast majority of every dollar made by their website.

We offer revenue shares up to 90 percent to our publishers, even when we work directly with buy side platforms like The Trade Desk.

That’s unheard of to earn from a SSP or an ad management company, and we’re able to do it because of our independence. 

Mediavine is not controlled by a board, or shareholders or by metrics like EBITDA that position us for acquisition. Our roadmap is entirely in our own hands. 

We’re driven only by the same thing that led us into ad management — to help independent content creators build and grow sustainable businesses.

Still Mediavine. When you succeed, we succeed.

We know that putting more money in your pockets drives your business, ultimately making Mediavine more successful in the long term.

Big Ideas. Long Term Vision.

If you’re worried about stock prices or your private equity firm’s next valuation, your vision is likely to be very short term.

Because we’re independent and unencumbered by these considerations, we’re able to think long term and big picture.

It’s why we’re still the only company with a viable third-party cookie solution, built for a new, privacy-centric era.

We’ve poured millions of dollars into Grow to help publishers navigate a shifting landscape of regulations, artificial intelligence and other challenges. 

Grow is just one example. Whether it’s investing in our ad tech, our own video player or any of our products, we’re always thinking through the lens of how we can improve our content creators’ businesses now, and long into the future.

The freedom to embrace — and act on — big ideas comes from our independence. 

An Independent Voice. A Brighter Future.

After nearly two decades, and hopefully for decades to come, we’re dedicated to protecting and shaping the future of the web.

We believe the web needs to be independent and diverse. The only way we can champion that vision is to reflect this ourselves.

It’s why we choose to continue to be Mediavine. Because the web cannot, and should not, be run by a select few power brokers. 

Of the top 100 companies on the Internet, Mediavine is the only one with the same makeup as you, the publishers we serve.

Banded together, we’ve become an Independent Internet Giant — an achievement that is as much yours as it is ours.

We’re still Mediavine. And with your partnership, we’re going to keep it that way for another two decades and beyond.

The post We’re Still Mediavine appeared first on Mediavine.

A successful blog is an essential part of keeping your brand alive. Social media platforms have come and gone (RIP Vine), however, blogs have withstood the test of time. Blogs will likely exist long after TikTok, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the app while waiting out its demise.

TikTok’s average user in the U.S. now spends about 29 hours a month on the platform while Facebook users are clocking in at 16 hours, and Instagram is only capturing 8 hours of attention.

In fact, Bloomberg reports that TikTok is on track to generate nearly $12B in revenue this year, after raking in nearly $4B in 2021.

Why is TikTok so popular? 

For starters, TikTok has positioned itself as fun, casual and authentic, attracting all age groups. Add to this the fact that younger generations have been using TikTok as a search engine more and more versus the more traditional Google Search, and you have a massive amount of activity centered just in the platform alone. 

Additionally, not only does TikTok have a low barrier to entry by encouraging more amateur — or “real” — videos versus stylized productions, but it also allows users to edit videos directly in the app. The app is designed to be easy and intuitive, allowing anyone to create content that will impress audiences.

The platform has also nailed personalization. The app creates an individualized feed for each user called a “For You Page” (FYP) that pulls content from the app that it thinks you will like based on posts you’ve engaged with.

Customizing your FYP is as easy as tapping the white heart button on a video you like. Or long-pressing on a video you didn’t care for and choosing “Not interested.” TikTok will use these signals to show you content that’s more aligned with what you prefer.

How can creating content for TikTok help my blog?

TikTok is a powerful tool with a massive audience. Harnessing even just a little of its power can expose your blog to new audiences that you probably are not reaching on other social media platforms.

If you have a business account with more than 1,000 followers, TikTok allows you to add a link to your website in your profile so that you can cross-promote your site across channels.

TikToks can also be shared across social platforms. In fact, many creators repurpose their TikTok videos on Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories and Pinterest (note that you’ll likely want to remove the TikTok watermark before posting).

Can TikTok get me more sponsored work?

Yes! Brands know that short-form video is one of the most lucrative ways to generate brand awareness and are actively seeking out bloggers who can write SEO-optimized content in addition to creating TikToks and Reels. Sixty-six percent of companies who have dedicated Influencer spending are already working with creators who regularly post on TikTok and rank it #5 in ROI according to Hubspot.

Our Influencer Partnerships team has seen an increase in interest in short-form video content and have been including it in nearly all the proposals we have created for campaigns this year.

We especially love the results we see from TikTok. Not only do TikTok videos receive great impressions and engagement, but they also drive audiences who are looking for more information back to blog posts. 

In the time it has taken you to read this blog post, nearly half of TikTok’s 700 million daily users have more than likely logged on to the app to start their scroll. Your content could be the first thing they see on their FYP. So, now that you’re in the know about the benefits of TikTok and why it should be an essential part of promoting your blog, go create an account and get posting!

The post Is It Time for You to Embrace TikTok? appeared first on Mediavine.